Lovelace, RICHARD,

Lovelace, RICHARD, Cavalier lyrist, was born at Woolwich in 1618, the eldest son of a Kentish knight of old family. Wood tells us he had his education at the Charterhouse, and at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, where his uncommon beauty and graceful yet modest manners made him the darling of the fair. Naturally he found his way to court, and went on the Scotch expedition in 1639, after which he retired awhile to his estate. In April 1642 he was committed to the Gatehouse at Westminster for presenting to the House of Commons a petition from the royalists of Kent 'for the restoring the king to his rights, and for settling the government,' and was only released on bail of £40,000. In the Journals of parliament this large sum is put as personal bail to the extent of £10,000, with a surety for £5000. Thus Lovelace throughout the struggle was confined to the mortifying part of a prisoner on parole, but he spent his estate in the king's cause by furnishing money to his brothers and friends. In 1646 he took part in the siege of Dunkirk, and was flung into prison on returning to England in 1648. During this imprisonment he revised his poems, and in 1649 published Lucasta, the name formed from Lux easta, his epithet for his love, Lucy Sacheverell, who married, says Wood, another on the stray report that Lovelace had died of his wounds at Dunkirk. After the king's execution he was set at liberty, but his estate was spent, and his last years were darkened by dejection and distress. He closed the tragedy of his life in a mean lodging in Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane, in 1658. Next year his brother collected his poems as Lucasta: Posthume Poems (1659). His tragedy, The Soldier, and his comedy, The Scholar, were never published, and are lost. Most of Lovelace's work is slovenly, obscure, and insipid, but his name survives secure of its immortality from two of the most faultless lyrics in the language—'To Althea from Prison' and 'To Lucasta on going to the Wars.' The best edition of his poems is that edited by W. C. Hazlitt (1864).